Mars
Mars is the fourth planet in the Sol system and the closet neighbour to the human planet, Earth . Despite it's proximity, Mars was not succsesfully colonised for a large period of the Expansionist Era. History In the late 21st Century - after the successful founding of a series of research stations on the surface of the Red Planet, most notably at Candor Chasma - the government of the United States of America attempted to establish a prison facility on the Martian surface (in the region known as Solis Lacus). Within hours of the first ship containing prisoners, the base was mysteriously destroyed, with the loss of all human life. The truth of the prisons destruction was kept secret by the US Government for years, and the American public fed a propaganda lie. It was only when the government sold the base to the increasingly self-confident People’s Republic of China twenty five years later that the truth of the tragedy finally came to light. To the American government, the devastation of the Solis Lacus penal colony was another blow that hastened the nation’s descent from glory. For the Chinese it was a show of dominance that they could pick up where the West had failed and Solis Lacus became a live experiment for newly developed terraforming techniques. Solis Lacus Penal Colony Solis Lacus (Latin for Lake of the Sun ) is a dark surface area on the surface of Mars' Southern hemisphere. In 2097 an expedition jointly financed by the governments of the United States of America and Russia was sent to Mars in the hope of establishing a successful prison facility on the planet. Led by experienced prison warden Stuart Monroe, the penal colony drew in capital from the Russian government hoping to alleviate their growing prisoner numbers. The popular media in both countries were paticularly keen to rid themselves of Mafia criminals, as well as a small number of prisoners viewed as being particularly sociopathic. The plan encountered several problems however and started to come undone when prisoners from rival American and Russian Mafia families began to riot while still in transit. After causing severe damage to the ship and costing the lives of many of its crew, Captain Walter Tye was authorised to activate the ship's cryogenics to nullify the potential threats. While this was successful in temporarily halting the prisoners rage, upon their awakening the problems re-emerged and the ship was forced to finish it's journey to the Red Planet on low power. While the cryogenics used by the Americans was not completely successful in prisoner handling, it served as a bench mark for the development of the cryosleep machines that would allow long distance space exploration in the future. Upon landing at the Solis Lacus Penal Colony the rioters went suspiciously quiet. It was soon discovered that the security bots designed specifically for the facility had received protocol overrides inserted by one of the prisoners - Salvatore Marcello who had brokered a temporary peace between the warring Mafia factions. After a slaughter of the security staff Warden Monroe was given the order to activate a self-destruct sequence that would rupture the colony's Einstrontium fuel tanks and flood it with radioactive flame. American media hailed the prison staff as All American Heroes and declaimed the rampant corruption and negligence of NASA in sending untried technology to power the prison colony. The disaster at Solis Lacus was the final nail in the coffin for the American perception of their nations dominance in space. The truth of this story was only revealed twenty five years later by Chinese taikonaut Major Keung Bai after his team stumbled upon the journal of Dr Helena Cruz, the facilities medical officer. Though Doctor Cruz did not survive the destruction, her account of events is the only primary source devoid of propaganda. Chinese Colonisation Category:Commonwealth Worlds Category:Planets